slaps wrote:Shapiro seems to have lost the ability to give a *f-bomb* about what the Stars think of his pieces and its fantastic.

It's an odd spot to be in. One day, he has the organization encouraging him to be more critical and almost angry at him and DeFranks for being too nice. The next day, he has the organization mad at him for directly quoting the guy who said it was all on the record. They asked him to be critical, so he is. The upside is it sure looks like it's helping his readership. The downside is he's probably never going to get an invitation to follow Mark, Burnside, and Heika to work for the team.

The craziest thing is looking at this in light of Lites. In the weeks since the tirade, Seguin and the PP went on a scoring tear to generate some wins, but otherwise, the team doesn't look any better. They may even be a bit worse when it comes to overall play. There's a lot of quit starting to show with long runs during games where the team is flat out awful. Benn is getting benched. Monty is clearly exasperated. And the only movement to come out of the front office all season is the occasional call up and demotion of an AHLer or two.

Lites insulted the media, insulted his players, tried to pump up the front office, and the team looks worse for it now as the dust is settling.

I got a ranch in downtown Dallas/I buy diamonds by the ton/Chase cuties in my Cadillac/Drill oil wells just for fun/But when it comes to boots, I need a deal/That will fit me right, toe to heel/So I get my boots at Western Warehouse.

Shapiro is not actually a Stars fan, as he's written about in the past. He's a hockey fan. So he's not going to carry water for the team like Heika did (tho I often wondered whether Heika even enjoyed watching hockey. Just got a vibe from him that he was going through the motions. For 20 years. Ugh).

Obviously the front office is desperate. Their days are numbered, and they don't know what to do. It's not like Seguin's shot totals have skyrocketed: he's doing the exact same things he was before, the only difference is that now those pucks are going in instead of hitting the crossbar (a.k.a. "regression to the mean").

Just looking forward to the first week of May, when Stars boards will be filled with commenters wondering what it Yzerman will take to come here.

But it’s not even the right comparison. Dallas gets 30+ days over 100 every year. How many days a year is Detroit at zero? Do they even get ten a year? I doubt it.

I got a ranch in downtown Dallas/I buy diamonds by the ton/Chase cuties in my Cadillac/Drill oil wells just for fun/But when it comes to boots, I need a deal/That will fit me right, toe to heel/So I get my boots at Western Warehouse.